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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24437569">whom death denies</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayachain/pseuds/mayachain'>mayachain</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Game of Thrones (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crypts of Winterfell, Daenerys Targaryen Is Not a Mad Queen, Episode: s08e03 The Long Night, Gen, Magical Realism, Now with more magic, Sansa Stark is Queen in the North, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Stark family feels, background canon relationships</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:54:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,953</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24437569</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayachain/pseuds/mayachain</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They dread the dead that may have wakened in the crypts. They don't expect the stone statues.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Robb Stark &amp; Sansa Stark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>111</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>whom death denies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>
    <span class="u">whom death denies</span>
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</p><p>The people that cannot fight are supposed to hide away in the crypts, but there is movement down in the crypts. Down in the crypts there are dead bodies, have they awoken, will they only meet their deaths all the sooner if they dare go down to the crypts now?</p><p>There is nothing else to do, they cannot allow a potential enemy in their midst. If there are wights waking down there they have to know, have to organize a defense. Have to find somewhere else to hide, anywhere else.</p><p>Sansa and Tyrion approach the heavy door with torches. They have to know. If it’s not safe to lead the people down there, they have to know.</p><p>An old man and a burly, elderly woman wrench the doors open. Five people hold their torches at the ready. They are as prepared as they can be for an onslaught of long-deceased Stark wights.</p><p>What comes clambering up the stairs that lead to the crypts is not wights.</p><p>Statue after statue emerges from down below, faster than the stone they are made of ought be allowed to move.</p><p>Not that Tyrion had ever expected stone statues to move.</p><p>They come milling out of the crypts and walk around the courtyard. They march in some sort of formation, Tyrion sees, but they are directionless. Sansa tries speaking to them, her face white with shock, but it seems pointless.</p><p>Tyrion fears it is only a matter of time before one of the living is trampled to death. He is jolted out of that very bleak thought when there is a flash of steel behind him.</p><p>“Starks!” Lady Sansa yells. The statues come to a stop. When Tyrion chances to look at her, she is holding her arm aloft, a dagger in her other hand, the arm streaked with blood. Stark blood.</p><p>The statues have halted and all look at her. They seem to be waiting, to Tyrion’s amazed relief, waiting for Sansa Stark’s command. They do not look at her – so odd, to think about stone statues actually looking at someone – as if she is prey.</p><p>“The Long Night is upon us!” Sansa calls. Tyrion has no idea where she found the words. “Winter has come! Protect the keep!”</p><p>At that, all the statues spread out and take up defensive positions on the battlements. A few of them seem to jump down on the other side and make their way to Daenerys’ and Jon’s motley garrison.</p><p>All, except one. All, except one who shuffles toward Sansa Stark with little intent of stopping. It lifts a hand, there’s nothing Tyrion can do, and she stands tall, trembling in her boots but not giving an inch.</p><p>The statue of King Robb extends a finger and touches it to his sister’s cheek. There is no eye in the courtyard that is dry, then.</p><p>“Jon is out there fighting, and Arya. Bran is in the Godswood,” Sansa murmurs. Robb’s statue nods. Two of the last statues to leave the crypts veer off in that direction.</p><p>Robb is still looking at Sansa. They’re almost the same height, Tyrion sees. Sansa lifts the hand that is wet with her own Stark blood and strokes it along her murdered brother’s temple, right under where the crown is. </p><p>She smiles. He steps back and lifts his sword high in the air.</p><p>“The King in the North!” Sansa cries.</p><p>“The King in the North!” cry the citizens. Even the lone dothraki and Unsullied that Daenerys left behind to protect Missandei join this chant. And why not?</p><p>No one really wants to go hide in the crypts now. The people under Lady Stark’s protection feel well protected by the statues, who, yes, seem able to dispatch the wights well enough. There’s nothing special about the swords they hold as far as Tyrion can see, but he supposes the magic that animates them and the magic that animates the wights cancels each other out.</p><p>The other, far more uncomfortable thought that prevents the people from venturing down into the crypts is the knowledge that it’s the statues of ancient and not so ancient Starks defending them, not their bones.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>The battle is chaotic. The living are outnumbered and they know it. It seems hopeless, but they will persist. They can do nothing else.</p><p>It takes a while for the fighting forces to really notice the statues. - Not least because it takes the statues that jumped down the castle walls a while to reach the battlefield. But then –</p><p>For every soldier that is killed, another is saved. For every fatal injury that leads to death, one is healed.</p><p>Later the survivors will know that a lot of what transpired was related to blood. The statue that comes across Daenerys and the dying Jorah is an ancient Stark with a Mormont mother. Daenerys watches wide-eyed as the stone statue touches a hand to Jorah’s wound and heals it. The statue then falls to the ground, once more motionless.</p><p>There are Dothraki and Unsullied who owe their lives to the statues. They may be foreign but they fight for Winterfell, which the ancient Starks seem to well understand. Yet it is uncanny, the way a statue will appear in the nick of time when a Northerner with a blood connection is in peril. Magical.</p><p>Closer to Winterfell, the statue of Ned Stark intercepts a blow coming for Jaime Lannister. Jaime has little time to stare, but for one absurd moment they look at each other. Then Jaime fights on and Ned moves forward. Saves Podrick’s life while he is at it.</p><p>An arrow destroys the White Walker coming for Lyanna Mormont. There are only a handful of women among the statues, and Lyanna knows that one, would know it even if it didn’t so resemble the Princess Arya.</p><p>The statue of Cregan Stark ensures that there will be no killing (much less turning) the injured Rhaegal.</p><p>Down in the Godswood, guards are dead and Theon is overwhelmed. He is still fighting but one Walker has made it past him, is advancing on Bran.</p><p>Two statues emerge from the trees and take care of wights and walkers with prejudice. Theon is woozy and Bran barely has time to make sense of things as not so far away, Arya kills the Night King.</p><p>Everything is over very quickly then.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>In the Godswood, one of the statues takes their sword and traces something in the snow. Theon squints. Something that looks maybe like a Kraken and the symbol for “Q”? </p><p>His head is killing him, and his wounds need treatment, but help had arrived before the undead could finish him. He lived in Winterfell most of his life, he sort of recognizes this statue? He takes a guess.</p><p>“Aye, I’m Quellon Greyjoy’s grandson,” he says. The statue of Rickard Stark nods. They were friends, Theon recalls, his and Robb’s respective grandfathers were friends. He lets the stony hand help him up.</p><p>Bran’s chair might be repairable but it took heavy damage during the fight. Better it than Bran, Theon thinks; Bran looks mostly alright and most importly: Alive. More alive than he’s seemed in a long time, in fact: He looks nearly giddy as he is gathered up in the arms of the statue portraying his Uncle Brandon.</p><p>Brandon Stark carrying Brandon Stark. If he weren’t so exhausted Theon would be laughing.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>Some of the statues have begun marching back down into the crypts. Some trickle back in with the surviving soldiers. Some are still on the battlements and seem very content listening to the chants of “Stark! Stark! Stark!”</p><p>The living have opened the gates. Sansa can see Arya – who saved them all, to hear the tales! Her little sister! - clinging to the – somehow now so much more accurate – statue of their father.</p><p>A much smaller statue is standing by Jon, who has paused to look over a limping Rhaegal. Somehow the dragon doesn’t look as frightening as Aunt Lyanna’s statue touches a hand to its snout. Jon looks like he could cry. Maybe he should.</p><p>So many more are alive than she had feared, when she’d dared hope for their survival at all. There is the ever lingering worry of how she will feed them, but Sansa is determined to be relieved and happy just now.</p><p>Her happiness is real when Arya lets go of their father’s statue and leaps into her arms. Sansa would bet that it won’t be long before her sister keels over from exhaustion, but for now she jumps from statue to living person to statue to living person, her family and friends and former enemies and strangers and untold ancestors.</p><p>The calls of “Stark!” have not lessened. Robb’s statue comes to Sansa after Arya has left him for Ser Brienne. Amid the chants, the first King in the North in three-hundred years takes off his crown – real bronze instead of stone, somehow – and gives it to Sansa. </p><p>She doesn’t take her eyes off his as she places it on her own head. The people scream. Only then does she dare look at Jon, who is looking between her and Robb – but though no words are spoken, she can feel the understanding between them. There was a will in which Sansa was stricken from the inheritance, but Tyrion who has found his brother in the chanting crowd lays no claim to the marriage that was that decision’s grounds. Robb doesn’t blame Jon for the choices he made as king – not that King Robb’s choices were all stellar, politically speaking – but he gave up the crown and whatever she does with it, the Crown of Winter belongs to Sansa.</p><p>She hardly dares looks for Daenerys. The proud Dragon Queen whose forces, Sansa will admit, helped save the realm just as she and Jon had promised. They might have prevailed without the dragons, Viserion was an added foe no one needed, but when it comes down to it Sansa will readily concede that without Daenerys’ forces more Northern lives would have been lost. And here the people are ignoring the Queen Jon Snow knelt to, incessantly chanting the Stark name.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>Daenerys doesn’t know what to think. Part of her wants to feel betrayed – her people bled and died here, she herself lost a child trying to help them. Both Drogon and Rhaegal are injured. </p><p>Yet she cannot deny that there is a very potent magic in these ancient Starks. They – she cannot begin to explain how – came alive, left the crypts – not that she saw that, but they must have – and fought not against the living but for them. Without them she would have lost Jorah, she knows it. She herself might have died. Rhaegal might be dead. Jon might be dead. Many more of her Dothraki and Unsullied might have given their lives, and even those she’d left behind in Winterfell. Tyrion. Varys. <i>Missandei</i>.</p><p>She hates feeling as helpless as she does now. The ancient Starks saved Winterfell, but what about her claim – is that a crown on Sansa’s head – will none now acknowledge her?!</p><p>A statue steps into her path. It looks much smaller now than it did when Jon first showed it to her, only a little taller than Daenerys herself. Lyanna Stark. Jon’s mother. Her brother’s wife.</p><p>The woman made of stone seems to scrutinize her just as much as Daenerys is attempting to divine all her secrets in return. What is she thinking? Can the statues think? One of them crowned Sansa, so they clearly have opinions on some things.</p><p>She gets the sinking feeling that the statue does not much approve of her and Jon’s relationship. On the tail end of that thought arrives the admission that in light of all that hers and Rhaegar’s love wrought, it’s not really any of Lyanna’s business. And even if she disapproves of the relationship, what is left of Lyanna in this world does not disapprove of Daenerys herself.</p><p>Stony fingers wrap around her queenly wrist. Jorah besides her shifts in alarm, but it is only a hold, not a squeeze in warning.</p><p>Lyanna lifts Daenerys’ hand over her head. She makes no sound. She doesn’t need to. There are more than enough Stark!chanting people looking at them. Looking at her doing it. A sign of victory.</p><p>They don’t chant the Targaryen name. They never will, Dany realizes now, at least not willingly. They greatly mislike calling her their queen; Jon may have knelt to her as Torrhen once knelt to Aegon, but Jon himself, Robb Stark and now Sansa were all kings (and queens) they had chosen.</p><p>They don’t chant the Targaryen name. But as the Lady Lyanna holds her hand aloft, the cries of “Stark!” slowly are interspersed with cries of “Dra-gons! Dra-gons!” </p><p>And maybe she does not need to be their queen. She is not ready to think that thought to its end, not yet, not now. But maybe she doesn’t need to be the queen to people who never wanted to concede their crown to her. Maybe she doesn’t need to be their queen to be among friends, here.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>Eventually, as most of the statues disappear down into the crypts, the chants die down. Triage of the injured, which has gone on the whole time in the background, is begun in earnest. Brandon Stark passes on Bran to Jon, who accepts the burden gratefully but is also grateful when Podrik appears with a chair to set Bran down on.</p><p>Robb gives Theon a nod, which Theon returns, eyes swimming in tears. The brother who betrayed his king, who helped save Sansa’s life and just an hour ago nearly died in defense of Bran. What was done can never be forgiven in full but as much as it can ever be, it has been forgiven.</p><p>The most recently erected statues of the Starks make their way to the crypts. By unspoken accord, their living relatives follow them, with Theon and Daenerys trailing after them and Gendry carrying Bran. The statues that have gone down before seem to have resumed their places in front of their graves, and only a handful of them are still moving.</p><p>Someone will have to go out and collect those that remained on the battlefield, Arya thinks. </p><p>Uncle Brandon gives them all some sort of salute and goes still. Aunt Lyanna embraces her father, then Arya’s father, then now-frozen Uncle Brandon – who is not completely frozen yet, Arya sees, because he blinks – then Jon for a long time. She gives the same salute Uncle Brandon gave to her nieces and nephew, returning to her grave, going still. Even frozen the statue looks so much more lifelike than it ever did before.</p><p>Father looks upon all of his children. He and Robb cannot seem to decide who should go first. Both are casting sad looks at Rickon's statue, Rickon who like all children interred in these crypts had never woken. In the end, there is one last hand on each of their shoulders, and then – then the life in the eyes of the stone statue erected in honor of Arya’s father is gone.</p><p>She almost misses Robb’s last salute while staring at him.</p><p>The only one left now is Grandfather Rickard. For a moment Arya wonders if he will ever go back to sleep seeing as due to the wildfire Mad King Aerys killed him with his grave holds no bones. He seems to frown, then look at Sansa, then between the frozen statues of his sons.</p><p>With a decisive stomp of his feet, he walks a bit further into the crypts, beckoning them all to follow him. He leads them to a door that has never in all of Arya’s life ever been opened, and by all appearances never in Sansa’s, or Jon’s. Theon who would know about Robb’s exploits here that Jon might not is equally confused. Even Bran, who has become so seemingly allknowing, does not know what to expect when the statue of their grandfather breaks the heavy lock on the door open.</p><p>Job done, he retreats back on the path to where his grave is. Arya can hear his footsteps, and knows that he will be frozen when she sees him next.</p><p>He deserves his grandchildren to be witnesses when he goes back to eternal vigilance. He deserves it, but he led them here; clearly, to him, their discovery of what is behind this door was more important than an honour guard.</p><p>They pile through the door one by one. Arya has to elbow her way past Jon and Gendry; they’re all so tall, even Sansa.</p><p>Sansa is crying. By the time Daenerys joins Arya in front of the men, Sansa has sunk down to the floor, giving off sobs far louder than those Arya heard before when the soldiers came home again.</p><p>It’s easy to see why. The room Rickard showed them is vast, and cold, and filled with food. </p><p>Later, they will come to the conclusion that the same magic that befell the statues must have preserved this hidden stock pile, and that going by the labels every year since the last Long Night provisions have been left here. Every year for thousands of years, with only four exceptions when ancient Starks withdrew a bare minimum to alleviate a famine. Every year, until Grandfather Rickard and Uncle Brandon were killed. Not even Uncle Benjen, who was left in Winterfell when Rickard rode south, seems to have known about it. Arya is sure that the way the information is spread will change.</p><p>For now, they can prepare a feast. For now, they can honor the dead. For now, they can live.</p><p><br/>
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